ABSTRACT
"Wisdom" now, literally "cries aloud in the streets, and no man regards her;" if the ragged urchins who throng the thoroughfares, and dog the footsteps of strangers, vending cheap publications, may be regarded as her heralds. "All knowledge is not nutriment"; far from it, there is a knowledge of evil, as well as of good;—a philosophy of vice, as well as of virtue,—and woe to that people, who are dependant for their mental food, upon the foul jackals of literature, who revel only in its garbage and corruption. In the South alone was literature regarded; the descendants of the Cavaliers, absorbed in reverential love for Mother England, acknowledged her literature, as well as her laws; both sufficed for them. The newspaper press, too, which, in this country, in nine cases out of ten, follows, instead of attempting to lead the public sentiment, took up the cry, and Cheap Literature literally deluged the land.
